March 2015

Moot Court Team Advances To Finals

The team of Stanley Blackmon, Caitlin Looney and Chelsea Phillips will advance to the ABA Moot Court national finals in Chicago in April. The team of Lauren Breland, Ben Hardison and Drew Hudson narrowly lost the final, under a tie-breaker. Stanley won an oral advocacy award, and Lauren, Drew and Ben won the award for third place brief. The teams were sponsored by Protective Life, advised by Prof. Carol Rice Andrews, and coached by three 2L Moot Court Fellows: Grant Luiken, Logan Matthews and Caitlyn Prichard.

Admitted Students Attend Open House

The Law School hosted the first of two open houses for admitted students on Feb. 13. The admitted students selected a class to observe and learned from students, faculty, and alumni about the first year of law school and UA Law offerings. This year admitted students visited the Tuscaloosa Federal Building and Courthouse and met U.S. District Court Judge L. Scott Coogler, ’84. Judge Coogler answered questions, spoke about the federal judiciary and led a tour of the courthouse. The Law School appreciates the following graduates who served on an alumni panel and spent time talking with students throughout the day:

Prospective Students Participate In DiscoverLaw Open House

The Law School hosted 90 students from 16 colleges and universities at its annual DiscoverLaw open house, in coordination with the Law School Admissions Council, for prospective law school applicants on Feb. 20. The DiscoverLaw open house is an informational event with a focus on diversity. Participating students learned about law school admissions, career opportunities, and tips for taking the LSAT from Kaplan Test Prep. Prospective students toured the Law School building, enjoyed lunch with current students and faculty members and participated in a mock class taught by Prof. Bryan Fair.

Events

Fourteenth Annual BLSA Scholarship BanquetJoin us for the Fourteenth Annual BLSA Scholarship Banquet at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 2 at the Harbert Center in Birmingham. This event will honor faculty, students and attorneys for their work in the legal profession.
This year’s keynote address will be delivered by April England-Albright, ’97, attorney for the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights in Atlanta. For more information or to RSVP, please send an email to Shalyn Smith at shalyn.smith@law.ua.edu or Prof. Bryan Fair at bfair@law.ua.edu.

Voting Rights Act

U.S. Judge Frank M. Johnson understood what it was like to be powerless, said U.S. Judge Myron H. Thompson at the Alabama Law Review’s 50th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act.
In 1965, Judge Johnson ordered that civil rights activists had the right to march from Selma to Montgomery, receiving support from President Lyndon B. Johnson, who authorized the Alabama National Guard to protect activists.
Judge Johnson had the ability “to understand what it was like to be somebody else,” Judge Thompson said. “In this case and all the voting rights cases and all the cases involving discrimination, I had the uncanny sense that he understood what it was like to be black, to be an outsider, to be powerless. Whether it was mental health cases or prison cases, his ability to identify with the powerless was remarkable.”

Farrah Law Alumni Society

Jan Crawford, CBS News chief legal correspondent, delivered the keynote address to the Farrah Law Alumni Society Banquet in Birmingham, where Justice Janie L. Shores was honored with the Sam W. Pipes Award for distinguishing herself through service to the bar, The University of Alabama, and the School of Law.
Crawford said Justice Clarence Thomas is “the most misunderstood and misreported figure in modern political and legal history.”
After Justice Thomas arrived at the U.S. Supreme Court, a narrative quickly developed, painting him as an understudy of Justice Antonin Scalia.
“That narrative is demonstrably, emphatically, unequivocally false,” Crawford said.

Hiring?

On Campus InterviewsRegistration is now open for Spring 2015 On-Campus Interviews. The Career Services Office helps find 1Ls and 2Ls for summer positions or 3Ls and alumni for post-graduation employment. Please contact the Assistant Dean for Career Services, Tom Ksobiech (tksobiech@law.ua.edu), for placement opportunities. The CSO arranges on campus interviews, collects resumes, and posts positions on its electronic job board. All CSO services are free of charge.

S.T.A.R.Each school year, the Career Services Office receives phone calls from employers – usually small firms – who are looking for a student to perform research on a single issue. That’s where S.T.A.R. (Short-Term Assistance in Research) comes in. The CSO will take a request and find a qualified 3L law student who has signed up for the program. More information and the application is available on the CSO website.

The Best Thing For Your Resume Since Spellcheck

LL.M. Concentrations in Taxation and Business Transactions Offered Online

The Law School offers two exceptional LL.M. programs through live, interactive Internet technologies. Students receive skills-based instruction, taught by respected professors and practitioners throughout the country, without having to leave their offices.
The tax program permits students to focus on courses in estate planning or business tax. The course of study for the business program is interdisciplinary in fields of law and business – including tax, finance, intellectual property, entrepreneurship, and traditional corporate classes. For more information, or to apply to either concentration, visit www.alabamallm.com or contact Assistant Dean for Graduate Law Programs Daniel Powell.

Class Notes

Tom Albritton, ’92, has been selected as executive director of the Alabama Ethics Commission.

Ted M. Holt, ’01, was named a member of the Birmingham Advisory Board of Oakworth Capital Bank.

C. Ryan Sprinkle, ’14, has joined Stroudwater Associates as a consultant.

David C. Wesley, ’87, has been selected as the president of Randolph-Macon Academy in Front Royal, Virginia.

Faculty Notes

PROFESSOR BILL ANDREEN continues to direct the Joint Summer School Program with the Australian National University (ANU) College of Law. The program is now in its 14th year. As part of the ABA’s oversight of study abroad programs, the UA Summer Program in Canberra was thoroughly re-evaluated last year (including a site visit) and was approved for continuation. (The next ABA evaluation will take place in 2020.) Prof. Andreen presented a paper at the Cumberland Law Review Symposium in November entitled “The Clean Water Act: Setting an Agenda for a New Era.” He also recently co-authored a CPR Case Brief, “Alt v. EPA: District Court Ruling Opens Gap in Clean Water Protections, Invites CAFOs to Ignore Pollution Standards.” Prof. Andreen advised the Karen LaMoreaux Bryan National Environmental Law Moot Court Team (for the 15th consecutive year).

PROFESSOR GAINES BRAKE joined the Long Term Care Ombudsman Advisory Council for the West Alabama Area Agency on Aging.

PROFESSOR BILL BREWBAKER made a presentation Feb. 28 titled “Law, Scripture, and Wisdom: The Case of Sir Matthew Hale” at a Pepperdine Law School conference on “Wisdom, Law, and Lawyers.”

PROFESSOR RICHARD DELGADO’S work on Latino lynching was quoted in an article by Cedar Attanasio in Latin Times on private and public vigilantism. Prof. Delgado was interviewed by Roque Planas for a front-page story in Huffington Post on a controversy over a new class at Arizona State University. Fox News criticized the class, which uses Prof. Delgado and Prof. Stefancic’s text, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, as fomenting hatred of white people. Huffington Post’s story, titled “Scholars to Fox News: Writing About White People Doesn’t Make You Racist,” quotes Prof. Delgado at length and comes to the opposite conclusion. Prof. Delgado’s article, “Law’s Violence: Derrick Bell’s Next Article,” was a Top-Ten SSRN Download for SSRN: Violence and Crime. Profs. Delgado and Jean Stefancic co-delivered a paper titled “Southern Dreams and a New Theory of First Amendment Legal Realism” at a conference sponsored by the Thrower family at Emory Law School. Organized by the editors of Emory Law Journal, the conference addressed developments in First Amendment law.

PROFESSOR HEATHER ELLIOTT spoke at the Federal Courts Section panel at the Association of American Law Schools annual meeting in New York in early January. The panel, “Standing in the Roberts Court,” also included Professors Richard Fallon (Harvard), Ann Woolhandler (Virginia) and Steve Calabresi (Northwestern), and was moderated by Professor Gillian Metzger (Columbia). Professor Elliott’s paper, “Does the Supreme Court Ignore Standing to Reach the Merits? Evidence (or Lack Thereof) from the Roberts Court,” will be published in the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal later this year. Prof. Elliott has been awarded a $40,000 grant from the United States Geological Study to produce a treatise on Alabama water law and policy; this is the second year Elliott has received this grant, the funds of which will permit her to hire student researchers and assist in publication of the treatise. Prof. Elliott also attended the Roundtable on Environmental and Animal Ethics hosted by the University of Illinois Program in Law and Philosophy. The Roundtable was held Feb. 4-7 in Tucson, Arizona, and included philosophers, legal theorists, economists, research veterinarians, and practicing lawyers.

PROFESSOR SUSAN PACE HAMILL was quoted in a feature article, “Hidden Wealth Flows to Elite New York Condos,” that was published on the front page of The New York Times Feb. 8. The article was about billionaires around the world buying up expensive real estate in New York City and using LLCs to hide their identity.

“Nothing in the genesis of limited liability corporations suggested they would be used to purchase personal real estate,” said Susan Pace Hamill, a University of Alabama professor who worked on LLC policy while at the Internal Revenue Service in the 1990s.

Prof. Hamill also was interviewed live by the Huffington Post on Feb. 9 about this same topic. This article discussed wealthy persons shielding their identity as owners of real estate in New York, using a variety of schemes, including the limited liability company (LLC).

Prof. Hamill was awarded a joint appointment in the Honors College. Starting in spring 2015, she will teach a seminar for seniors focusing on Alabama public policy issues. Her scholarship has embarked on a new direction–interdisciplinary with the English department–harnessing the power of literature to portray injustice embedded in the law. This semester she is workshopping her debut literary piece, “Pretty Hair: From the Ivory Tower to Emancipation on the Campaign Trail” (a memoir about her campaign for the legislature, 17 chapters, approximately 90,000 words) in the MFA program.

PROFESSOR PAUL HORWITZ published “More ‘Vitiating Paradoxes’: A Response to Steven D. Smith,” 41 Pepperdine Law Review 943 (2013). That contribution is one of several invited responses to a paper by Smith, who in turn offers a reply to Prof. Horwitz and the other commentators in the same issue. Prof. Horwitz presented talks on his article, “The Religious Geography of Town of Greece v. Galloway,” forthcoming in the Supreme Court Review, at Emory Law School and Washington University School of Law.

PROFESSOR DAN JOYNER gave a presentation at the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) in Rome, Italy, at a conference on coercive economic sanctions and international law. His presentation covered international legal limitations on the application of coercive economic sanctions by states and by the U.N. Security Council.

PROFESSOR JEAN STEFANCIC submitted an article to Pittsburgh Law Review for a symposium honoring Derrick Bell. Titled Discerning Critical Moments, her article posits that critical theory helps one recognize decisive moments in one’s personal and professional life, and take action as Bell did on several occasions. Prof. Stefancic and Prof. Delgado accepted positions on the national advisory board of the Critical Race Studies in Education Association, which advances scholarship and innovative teaching in that field.

PROFESSOR GARY SULLIVAN hosted a presentation that was co-sponsored by the American College of Bankruptcy and the Law School. The presentation involved an interactive discussion of conflicts of interest, competence and professionalism in the practice of bankruptcy law. College Fellows Richard Carmody and Tim Lupinacci participated in the event.

As Faculty Advisor, he accompanied the Duberstein Bankruptcy Moot Court Team to the Cristol Kahn Paskay Cup in Coral Gables, Florida. Hosted by The University of Miami School of Law, the CKP Cup provides formal practice rounds – judged by leading practitioners and jurists – for Duberstein teams from law schools in the Eleventh Circuit. The Alabama team performed well and will compete in the upcoming national tournament in New York.